Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
by G0REL0RD
Summary: Novelization of the game.
1. Prologue

**Author's note:** _Greetings to everyone viewing this story!_

_This is the second work that I'm posting on this site, the first one being the novelization of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Those of you who are already familiar with my first fic might think right now that I'm abandoning it in favor of a new project. Well, let me assure you that I'm NOT. Novelization of SR is still my top-priority work, while this story you're viewing right now is just a side project that I decided to give a shot. I'm not meaning to say I take this fic lightly, but my main focus will always be on the SR-novel (until it's finished, of course). So please, no worries here)_

_Concerning Abe's Oddysee: the reason I so suddenly decided to novelize it as well was mostly because of the recent rumors about the reboot of the original game. I've watched a couple of videos on YouTube demonstrating the new graphics and gameplay of the upcoming reincarnation, and this instantly made download the original game from the Internet and relive all the childhood memories. It took me only a few days to re-walk the entire game, but the impressions I got were so strong I just couldn't help embodying them in the form of a fanfic XD For now, I can't tell for sure if I'm going to write more or not - that will also depend on the feedback I will (or will not) be getting._

_Btw, I would like to address my LoK followers yet again and strongly advise you not to walk past this story only because it has nothing to do with LoK universe. Those of you who remember the time when Soul Reaver just hit the shelves of video game stores might also remember that the Oddworld saga started its way nearly around the same time. Therefore, it might be quite possible you also heard about Oddworld at that time and might even have played it like me. To me, this was a Golden Age of video games when truly interesting plots and well-played characters could very often make up for lack of today's colorful graphics and other technical capabilities. In this respect, both LoK and Oddworld series have always seemed alike to me._

_And, as always, I can't help but say: please, read &amp; review! Your feedback is extremely important to me and it makes a great part of my motivation to write. Even criticism is always very welcome._

_Thank you for your attention and now, onward with the story,_

* * *

**Prologue**

The sky was dark with thick black clouds of smog belched into it from the factory's smokestacks. The sun was trying hard to breach this impenetrable blanket of fog, but the decades of unstoppable pollution produced by the plant's chimneys made sure not a single ray of light could ever pierce through. Therefore, the entire area of this industrial complex was always deeply submerged into darkness, its density never changing at any time of day or night. It also didn't help that every part of this gigantic group of buildings was made exclusively of dark and toneless metal, the red rust on its surface seeming to be the only thing to brighten its tarnish outward.

There was, however, one thing to stand out of this dull panorama. It was the factory's emblem on the main central hub of its building, depicting a colorful animated image of a Glukkon - a member of the very race that proudly owned this colossal plant. Painted in bright, yellow color with ruby red eyes, it was smiling broadly from this logo, almost radiating with friendliness. Anyone to look at this trademark would have probably at once wished to become an employee of this company or, at the very least, to buy its production right away. The name of this impressive enterprise was pictured in red letters right beneath the smiling Glukkon's face and read two words that to someone resembled pleasure and nourishment and to others resembled nothing but pure torment and despair:

'RuptureFarms'

RuptureFarms was the biggest meat processing plant on Oddworld. Every day thousands of barrels with various meat ingredients and delicacies made from the most exotic forms of wildlife on the planet rolled off its assembly line to get to the tables of the consumers. Ironically, the most avid of those consumers were the very members of the Glukkon race. Meat made the biggest part of Glukkon's economy and it also made the biggest part of Glukkon's diet. It was like an endless circular flow of money and food where Glukkons ate what they invested their funds into and invested their funds into what they ate.

Of course, Glukkons were not the only beings on Oddworld to enjoy the assortment of RuptureFarms' gourmet products. Sligs, their loyal henchmen and bodyguards, certainly did not averse to having some of those meat specialties for dinner as well. They were not as particular to what they ate as their rulers were and probably could not even fathom the whole concinnity of the RuptureFarms' production. Yet, being the lower subordinate class they were, Sligs were probably cool as long as they just had their share of scraps from their masters' table. This could have seemed a bit unjust, because without Sligs to ensure the order at Ruprture Farms, Glukkons would have never been able to establish such a prolific industrial empire. But like in every society, where there were leaders, there were also followers, and Oddworld was no exception in this respect.

And, finally, among Glukkons and Sligs there was also the third race that would have loved to enjoy the RuptureFarms' gastronomy alongside the first two races, but was strictly denied that opportunity. Those were Mudokons, the race of slave laborers working at RuptureFarms and some other factories across Oddworld. Oppressed and belittled by both Glukkons and Sligs, Mudokons were reduced to cheap labor force that only cleaned up grime inside and outside the factory and operated various manual machines and devices. Mudokons were not just subjugated – they were abused, disregarded and humiliated. Day after day the Sligs that supervised them beat each and every single Mudokon to a bloody pulp just for fun, absolutely careless about the possible casualties. If a Mudokon died on the factory floor, no one bore any liability for that. Even though the Glukkons in the RuptureFarms' Management insisted that the casualties at the plant be kept at minimum, this was not out of any concern or compassion for Mudokons' lives. The only thing Glukkons cared about was the fluency of the factory's workflow, and in order to maintain it, all employees should have better been kept alive.

Despite all of the aforesaid, none of the Mudokons ever tried to question this derogatory position of theirs, let alone try to stand up for themselves. Their social status had always been taken by them for granted and, with the course of time, to change something about it was getting ever harder. Mudokons were born as slaves, and as soon as they reached maturity, they were at once thrown into factories to start working up a sweat. Not to mention, the Sligs jailing them there overmatched their kind both individually and numerically, which made the prospect of any rebel or revolution on the part of Mudokons little but infeasible. It was hard to tell why specifically Mudokons were picked to be the dominated race. In fact, legends had it that once Mudokons used to be a supreme race on Oddworld. Nowadays, though, there was no telling for sure about it. Modern generations of Mudokons were kept ignorant of their heritage and barely knew or saw anything in their lives outside their places of employment. Their existence began inside the plant's premises and most commonly ended there too.

As years went by, the swing of things at RuptureFarms continued staying the same. The malnourished, exhausted Mudokons worked day and night, assiduously scouring the dirty walls and the floor of the place with wet dusters. Their warders, Sligs, swaggeringly walked around them with a springing mechanical sound made by their robotic legs, never forgetting to give their 'supervisees' some preventive punch every now and then. This all was recorded by the cameras placed on Security Orbs flying under the ceiling of every premise in the factory. Those were round-shaped mechanisms with a red 'eye' that were devised to detect the so-called 'Mudokon chanting'. It was rumored that ancient Mudokons had the gift of possessing the minds of some living beings, which is why those Orbs were created to suppress any attempts of the employees to make use of that ability. If any sign of Chanting got within the range of the Orbs' sensors, their red eyes would zap the Mudokon using it with a bolt of electricity right on the spot. That blast didn't kill but merely stun the target, but the Mudokon to have received it would almost always be finished off by the nearest Slig guards straight after.

It was hard to tell how Mudokons really felt about the way they were treated because conversations between employees at RuptureFarms were strictly forbidden. If a Slig was to see two or more Mudokons as much as saying 'Hello' to one another, it had the right to shoot to kill. Apparently, the purpose of such harsh rule was to ensure no conspiracy could be hatched among the slaves. But, of course, like with every rule, there were always some ways of evading it. When sentinel Sligs dozed off, which they did quite frequently by the way, Mudokons could always interact with one another in a hushed voice. The majority, however, did not want to risk a bullet in their head only for the sake of some purposeless small talk and rather preferred to keep silent. Therefore, any words of grievance or discontent were hardly ever heard among them.

However, the Mudokons' unique anatomy was still able to find a way to inform everyone around of their true emotions. Mudokons had chameleonic nature and thus had the ability to alter their skin tone to reflect their current mood. Those that were angered turned a reddish hue, while sad and depressed ones became bluish. For their own good, though, it was better for every Mudokon to try to do its best not to display any anger or sadness because Sligs were very receptive to this. Whenever they saw a particular Mudokon being too disgruntled or too frustrated, they felt it to be their duty to make things worse by giving that Mudokon a beating of its life. This usually made the angered Mudokons evermore angered, resulting in them sometimes taking out their accrued irritation on their fellow workers. The depressed Mudokons, on the other hand, would plunge into their despair so deep they often became suicidal and then ended their suffering with their own hands. This was, indeed, an undesirable consequence from the standpoint of industrial efficiency, but still the one to be considered a 'cost of production'.

Over time, some Mudokons were able to learn to put up with their thralldom and even develop a sort of dedication to their work. Among such unlikely individuals was one Mudokon whose name was Abe. He was an outstanding member of his race, and that was not only because of his working enthusiasm. Unlike his fellow congeners that had green-colored skin, Abe had a shade of purplish blue to his derma, which earned him lots of laughs and pokes from other Mudokons. On top of that, it automatically put a huge bull's eye on him for every Slig guard to pass by as none of them could resist the urge to kick the living hell out of such exotic slave.

But the uniqueness of Abe's exteriority didn't stop at his bluish skin. His face bore an interesting habit which was his lips that were sewn together with two sets of crossed leather stitches. Due to this peculiarity, his fellow Mudokons started calling him 'Stitch Lips'. Abe never explained how and when he got those stitches, perhaps because he didn't remember that himself. Yet, there were lots of rumors trying to conjecture that mystery.

Some said that Abe's mouth was stitched shortly after his birth by his mother Sam, the Mudokon Queen. If them to believed, Abe used to cry a lot as a baby, and Sam was afraid that his noisiness would inevitably lead him to getting killed one day. So she decided to sew up his lips to make it physically impossible for Abe to create any disturbances.

Others said that Abe got his lip stitches after he had become a full-fledged employee of RuptureFarms. A story implied that he once tried to amuse his Mudokon friends by imitating the sound of a giant saw with his mouth. But in doing so, Abe had accidentally awakened his dormant Mudokon Chanting abilities he did not even know he had. His friends could only stand and watch with their mouths agape when mysterious flickers of turquoise radiating energy suddenly appeared around the unaware Abe and started twirling above him like a swarm of fireflies. At the same time, the sentinel Sligs nearby started going crazy, screaming in anguish and hectically stampeding every which way. When the blue Mudokon realized that there was an all out havoc taking place behind him, he stopped making those noises, and the Sligs came round to themselves again. But after they noticed that the moment of this sudden attack on their minds surprisingly coincided with Abe's 'sound effects', they quickly figured out the source of their Abe was lucky nobody knew anything about the concept of 'Chanting' at that time - otherwise, he would have most probably got killed. Instead, he only got his lips stitched so that such thing would never ever happen again, while Glukkons decided to build those Security Orbs and spread them across the entire RuptureFarms complex to prevent any further cases of Chanting among other Mudokons. But again, this was just another rumor.

Regardless of what was the truth about the origins of Abe's lip stitches, they had already loosened since whenever he got them, giving him back the ability to speak. Abe, however, didn't bother trying to remove them completely, believing them to be closely connected to his identity. One could think this an oddity, but if there was one thing that was truly in character of Abe, it was coping with every hardship life threw at him. Whether it was taking beatings and mortifications from Sligs, receiving invidious nicknames from his Mudokon friends or doing meaningless dirty work, Abe coped with all of that. He never allowed his emotions to get the better of him and affect the quality of his work. Abe loved his job and held onto it no matter what. Perhaps, that was what at some point had helped him become an employee of the year.

But Abe had no idea that this all was going to change in one single day…

It was on that fateful night that Abe was working late at RuptureFarms. Being an employee of the year, he was granted the privilege of working at the main building of the complex where the meetings of the Glukkons' Management Board took place. Abe considered this a great honor and therefore worked harder than ever, thoroughly walking over every inch of the premises with his dry-and-wet vacuum cleaner. At the end of the night, Abe was already cleaning the area right around the Board Room. It was a broad circular hall divided into the platform adjoining the perimeter of the place and the Board Room itself that was separated from the rest of the hall's space by a thick set of metal walls. On the walls of the hall were hanging colorful highlighted posters depicting various brands of RuptureFarms production. As Abe was walking past these posters, he couldn't help stopping by each one to take it in yet another time.

The first banner he passed by showed a pink bipedal creature with disturbingly jointed tridactyl hind limbs and numerous tiny arms growing out of its abdomen that looked like insect pincers. The being also had a massive plated humpback with spikes growing out of it and no less than three beak-like jaws full of sharp teeth. For advertising purposes, this animal was pictured bright and friendly looking, but this was very different from what reality had to offer. The yellow logo above it declared the name of the product that was made from this creature's meat:

'Meech Munchies'. A text in small print in the lower right corner of the banner also added: 'Without preservatives'.

After reading this shop-sign, Abe sighed and shook his head in disappointment. RuptureFarms used to make a lot of Meech Munchies, but it was only until Meeches were through. In their desire to manufacture more and more of those specialties, the Glukkons had lead Meeches to extinction, and the Meech Munchies, as the crossing inscription over this poster said, were 'no longer available'.

Abe continued his way and then stopped by another banner. This one depicted a different delicacy produced under the guise of RuptureFarms. On the blue background was glaring a puffy turn over pie with an orange insect-like creature resting on its top. It had four pointed legs with which it was eagerly digging into the pie it was sitting upon and a head that looked like some weird six-fingered hand appendage. Like the Meech in the previous poster, this animal was also made in an animated, cartoonish style, without any realism to its details. The name of the specialty this being represented was written in large blue letters both above and beneath the picture and read:

'Paramite Pies'. Below it was another small print addition in a yellow blotch-like frame, saying: 'Homestyle, 100% natural'.

At the sight of this poster, Abe mirthfully rubbed his skinny belly. He once had the joy of knowing how tasty Paramite Pies were and was glad RuptureFarms still made them.

Abe marched several more feet forward until he came across the third placard. Recreated in it was the image of a purplish cake with some green filling pouring out of it. Standing upon it was the very animal that made the cake's filling. It was a green centauroid creature with four nipper-like legs, a humanoid-like torso and a head that looked like a long crab claw. Those who drew this poster clearly did their best to ensure this being looked amiable as they even made it smile with its claw-like beak. Hardly there was anyone unfamiliar with Oddworld's wildlife that after watching this advertisement would even think for a moment that he's looking at one of the most feared predators on this planet. The cakes this banner publicized were made out of creatures called Scrabs – 'delicious and nutritious', as the banner itself said.

As Abe remembered the way 'Scrab Cakes' tasted, he couldn't help rubbing his palms together with pleasure. Scrab Cakes were among those RuptureFarms' dainties that Abe had the luck of trying once, and the experience was hardly forgettable. Much to his delight, the factory still produced them, and Abe couldn't wait for the next lucky opportunity to try some of them again.

Once through with milling about the Scrab Cakes poster, Abe made for the next and final one in this row. This advertisement didn't have any products on it yet, but merely promised something 'New 'n' Tasty' coming soon. And if the size of inscriptions on the poster was any indication, this 'New 'n' Tasty' had to be something really huge. The prospect of what this new product could be was very intriguing, and Abe was really curious to know that.

Unfortunately for him, his curiosity was just about to be satisfied…

When Abe turned away from the banner and was already about to continue running his vacuum cleaner over the place, a beam of light suddenly fell upon his face, drawing his attention. Abe shifted his gaze to the source of this unexpected distraction and saw that it was coming from a split in the door leading to the very Room where the meetings of the Glukkons' Management Board took place. Normally, the doors to the Board Room had to be sealed pressure tight, but this once, they weren't. And ringing from there were the loud aftersounds of some heated discussion, which was probably a RuptureFarms' Board Meeting being in session. The sounds kept getting louder with every second, and the more they did, the more irresistible was getting Abe's desire to go get a peep of what was happening there. Of course, spying on the Glukkons' Board Meeting was a calculated risk, especially in his position, but Abe found himself to be unable to oppose his overfilling curiosity. So, yielding his momentarily whim, the blue Mudokon left his vacuum cleaner and carefully sneaked on its tiptoes to the tantalizing split between the doors.

As Abe peered into the aperture, he was amazed already, because this was the first time he got to see the infamous Board Room. It was an enormous dark spherical chamber with a circular platform erected in its very center. A large emblem of RuptureFarms was adorning the platform's surface where in the company of one Slig stood a tall figure in a purple cloak-like suit and black-and-white spectator shoes. Its head was huge and bulbous, with standing out trumpet-like ears and diabolically glowing blank eyes. From its mouth was sticking a thick cigar that burned almost as bright as its eyes. Abe knew this person all too well to not have recognized it even from a distance. It was Mullock the Glukkon – the supreme representative of the so-called Magog Cartel which membership included all most prominent Glukkon industrialists. He was also the Chairman of the RuptureFarms' Board of Directors and, what was no less important, Abe's boss.

Aside from Mullock, there were also other members of the Glukkon Management present at this meeting. There were six of them standing along the periphery of the hall on their individual smaller platforms. Like Mullock, they were all dressed in those long enwrapping suits of various colors. Abe counted two Glukkons in light-blue suits and two in beige suits, as well as one Glukkon in a green suit and one in a purplish suit almost similar to the one Mullock wore. All of them were avidly discussing something with one another, but any details were almost impossible to make out because Glukkons' hoarse voices made everything they were saying sound more like Slog's barking. Nonetheless, even without hearing precise words, it was easy to deduce that the Glukkons were disgruntled with something, and the cause of their disgruntlement must have been the main topic of today's meeting.

At some point, Mullock asked everyone to be quiet. The six industrialists obediently went silent, and when they did, the Slig standing by Mullock's side took out some remote controller and turned on a colossal high-definition screen in front of the central platform. The revealed image display showed a title slide of the presentation named 'RuptureFarms Annual Board Meeting'. This slide was quickly skipped to give place to a more informative part, and then the reason for the Glukkons' discontent at once became clear.

The next slide of the presentation demonstrated a graphic of profits from the sales of Paramite Pies. A red blinking arrow in the XY coordinate system had its vector directed toward the lower right angle, which indicated that the profits were rapidly decreasing. This disheartening view made the six Glukkons along the room's perimeter burst into a new round of grumbling.

"Hey, did ya see that?" could be heard among them.

"The profits are goin' down!" someone lamented.

Mullock didn't make any comments on that and just continued standing motionless and watching the presentation while chewing casually on his cigar. The Slig by his side clicked his remote controller to shift to the following slide. This one displayed profit statistics on the Scrab Cakes sales. The situation was just as grim as with the Paramite Pies, if not worse. Both Scrabs and Paramites had been turning up thin, and at the rate everything was going, both species could be driven to extinction just like Meeches were earlier before.

The groaning among the Glukkon Management had intensified. Mullock, however, remained cool, showing no signs of concern at all. At some point, the Glukkon in a green suit standing behind him failed to hide his anxiety and addressed himself directly to the Chairman of the Board,

"My God, Mullock, what are we gonna do, huh?" he asked him with both disquietude and vexation.

Mullock just half turned his head to him and replied in a confident and imperturbable voice,

"Watch."

The presentation was then switched to the next slide which showed complete antithesis of what the two preceding ones had demonstrated. The red arrow of profit was now optimistically going upwards as if the economic dilapidation predicted heretofore had just been completely reversed. Shining above this promising diagram was the logo of this 'New 'n' Tasty' product Abe had just seen on the poster in front of the Board Room. It appeared that Mullock was looking to stake everything on this new type of meat that was promised to be announced soon, and someway somehow it alone would be able not just to conquer the profit decrease but to even turn it into an increase.

The intonations of the Glukkons' grunts slowly began to change from agitated to surprised ones. Although it was, indeed, very relieving for them to realize that Mullock had a plan, the idea that just one solitary product could alone make such a revolutionary impact didn't seem very believable. The six Managers started wonderingly exchanging glances with one another until the one in a green suit finally voiced his perplexity by asking,

"But how?"

Abe was equally intrigued to find out what kind of meat-type could make such tremendous difference. However, after Mullock told the Slig by his side to open the next slide of the presentation, the blue Mudokon could only wish he had never been so excited about learning this.

As the core of Mullock's financial scheme became unfolded to view, Abe was overtaken by a shock so strong he barely refrained from falling down into a swoon. His heart gave a harsh jump in his chest, spreading a wave of diffused weakness through his every body part. His whole dystrophic husk started shivering hectically as if he had just been exposed to a blow of a snowstorm. Abe was so horrified he wanted to scream, but the horror he was experiencing seemed to have taken the whole air out of his lungs. All he could do was stand there in torpor and watch with bloodshot eyes the fruits of Mullock's sadistic brilliance shining at him brightly from the wide screen. This 'New 'n' Tasty' recipe that the Chairman of the RuptureFarms' Board was looking to use for restoration of his Meat Empire's former grandeur turned out to be a bloodied Mudokon's head impaled on a stick like some corndog. The inscription above this macabre picture read two words that Abe would never forget till the end of his life. 'Mudokon Pops' – that was the name of this upstart product.

Upon seeing this sickening spectacle, Abe had to cover his mouth with his sweaty palm to prevent himself from puking. The Glukkon Managers in the Board Room, however, didn't share Abe's nervous disgust as all of them burst out laughing demonically, showering Mullok with approving cries of jubilation. The Slig standing next to him also hurried to applaud his Master's genius and quickly joined the rest in their joyful laughter. Mullock, who was probably very proud of himself at that moment, could only relish in his triumph and rejoice his own greatness. He had just dug his own company and his allies out of another financial hole and once again proved himself to be a well-deserved Chairman of the Board and a member of the Magog Cartel. Now he could only fantasize how remarkable would be the accomplishments his brilliant game-plan would bring and, who knew, maybe one day it would even lead him to becoming an owner of his own monopoly and a prestigious status of a 'GlockStar' – the highest class in the Glukkons' social hierarchy.

In the meantime, Abe frightenedly shrank away from the split in the doors, still wrestling the shocking revelations he had just learned. After disclosing the dirty little secret of the RuptureFarms' Management, the blue Mudokon felt his mind to be scrambled. Just a couple of minutes ago he honestly believed that he had a good job, and now he was forced to cope with the thought that he and the rest of his people working here were about to become dead meat. Abe was scared and bewildered. He did not know what to do now. His brain was numb and irresponsive, the logic and intellect seemed to be absent. The only thing he was able to respond to was his fear. Abe knew he was in danger and he knew that as long as he remained within the walls of RuptureFarms, his chances of doing something about kept getting evermore unlikely.

He just had to escape.

He just had to be free.

Amid this thought, the blue Mudokon sharply looked either sides of him, and then desperately took it to the heels. Unfortunately, Abe's breakout didn't go unnoticed. One of the Security Orbs that heavily guarded this part of the complex instantly detected the abrupt transition of one of the employees and focused its zoom lens on him. It took the drone only a couple of seconds to process the recorded image and identify the fugitive. A moment later, Abe's photo from the RuptureFarms card index with large 'WANTED' signs on it was already printed on every monitor at the factory. Then the alarms across the complex were turned on, informing each and every single Slig guard at RuptureFarms that an escape had been attempted by one of the slaves. Abe had officially become a walking target, and any Slig to encounter him had every right to shoot him dead.

But Abe didn't care about that. He only cared about one thing right now - running. He had no plan or strategy in his mind. He wasn't even sure where exactly he was running. All he knew was that he had to run, because this was the only way he could escape this terrible destiny the Glukkons had planned for him and his kind. But at that time, Abe had no idea that he also had a destiny of his own…


	2. Chapter 1: Run Abe Run

**Run Abe Run**

A bright red light kept illuminating the premises of the factory's central hub at intervals as the alarms were ringing loudly all over the place. Small squadrons of Sligs were being assembled from the sub-zones of the plant to heighten security at the main building. For the past several decades, escape bids at RutureFarms had been extremely rare, so the devoted servants of the Glukkons were more than happy to use this as an opportunity to variegate the monotony of their everyday life. Not to mention, to catch a fugitive at work could be an excellent chance to get a job promotion which had become far from easy due to the lack of security breaches over the recent years.

In the midst of all this mess, Abe was running as fast as his legs could carry him, passing by numerous conveyor lines, hydraulic pipes, air vents and other elements of the factory's industrial adornment. He knew that he was the culprit of this havoc going on around him, and that certainly added to the state of panic he was in now. Abe still hadn't completely recovered after the shocking truth he had learned when sneaking upon the factory's Annual Board Meeting, and now he also had to wrestle with realization that he had an entire RuptureFarms' security service following him at tail. All this put together kept the blue Mudokon in such a great fear he didn't even notice how he was already running along a very narrow platform that rose quite high above the ground. Like most other Mudokons, Abe was afraid of heights, but right now he was too focused on his escape to remember that.

Before long, Abe began to detect some noises coming from behind him. They resembled unpleasant springing gnash of a metal mechanism, and unfortunately for Abe, he knew this sound all too well to not have recognized it at once. It was made by the Sligs' robotic legs known as 'Slig Pants' – a generous gift granted to their race by Glukkons in exchange for the Sligs' services. Rumor had it that the members of the Slig race were originally born with their hind limbs fused together into some tail-like appendage, resulting in them being able to move only with the help of their front paws. Knowing that, Glukkons offered Sligs the gift of legs to gain the loyalty of the latter, and Sligs gladly accepted. Now, with the help of this ingenious invention, every Slig at RuptureFarms was able to run faster than any Mudokon ever could, which made the task of catching a rebellious escapee for the local guards evermore easy.

Abe frightenedly glanced back over his shoulder and saw an ominously looking red visor glowing at him from the gloom of the space a couple dozen yards behind. In a matter of moments, the figure sporting this accessory finally showed to the light, confirming Abe's worries. Chasing him at full speed was a Slig with a machine gun held in its oversized green forelimbs. At the sight of this, Abe gulped hard and tried to run even faster, although he was already doing this at the limit of his physical abilities. The blue Mudokon knew that if his pursuer would have got close enough for a precise shot, he would be as good as dead.

Unfortunately, Abe's fixation on his velocity once again caused him to grow reckless as he overlooked the moment of coming to the end of the platform he was sprinting along. When he finally noticed that, his right foot was already about to step on empty air. Abe gruffly skidded to a stop, his toes reflectively digging into the thick metal beneath just half inch away from the edge of the platform. Then the blue Mudokon started awkwardly flourishing his arms around and bending its torso back and forth in an attempt to refrain from slipping off the high ground. But before he was able to catch his balance, a nasty raspy voice rang from the rear, calling to him,

"Freeze!"

Abe worriedly turned his head around only to see his very chaser already standing about ten feet away and pointing at him with its machine gun. This was the final push needed to knock the ground from under the blue Mudokon's feet, and Abe helplessly lost his equilibrium and tumbled off the platform all the way down. The Slig that had been keeping him at gunpoint didn't see that coming and could only belatedly pull the trigger of his weapon, sending a volley of gunfire after the fugitive slave. But all those bullets went into nowhere as Abe's dystrophic husk was already swooping down to the bottom of the hub like a dropped bird.

Just when Abe was about to think that his attempt to escape would end in nothing than a clumsy employment accident, he suddenly felt his body combing against something wet and soft, yet sturdy at the same time. The impact wasn't hard and the blue Mudokon quickly came round to himself. When he did, he dazedly looked either side of him and found himself to be surrounded by two rows of vertically protruding curved bones enclosing him like cage bars. Abe hurriedly sat up and then saw that he was lying right on top of a huge piece of ribbed meat moving along one of the many conveyor lines that pierced this place like threads of cobweb. By lucky chance, his awkward fall from the platform got him to land right on one of those conveyors, which was, indeed, an unbelievably fortuitous coincidence.

However, before Abe could even breathe a sigh of relief, he suddenly felt some harsh tremor rumble through the assembly line all the way to the fabric of the meat he was sitting on. This tremor kept coming in intermittent pulses, sounding almost like some giant footsteps. The blue Mudokon nervously looked behind him and clapped his bloodshot eyes upon a huge meat grinder hanging right above the conveyor about twenty feet away from him. Every time another rib side rolled underneath it, this imposing construction violently came down, squashing this piece of meat in a rabid splash of blood and shattered bones. Abe watched this process with some mesmerized fascination until he realized that if he continued sitting like this and doing nothing, he would be flattened just like the meat he was now resting upon.

Agitated again, Abe hastily got off the rib that had just saved his life and started hectically jumping over the next pieces of meat on his way, trying to distance himself from the grinder. Like all Mudokons, Abe had spindly body type and frail bone structure, which made him very swift and agile. Unfortunately, even despite this, the blue Mudokon was still losing this race as the conveyor under his feet kept doing its best to mitigate his progress by constantly pulling him back to the grinder. After leaping over four pieces of meat, Abe reverted eyes and realized that he was barely making headway as the grinder behind still seemed to be just as close to him as before. This unpleasant observation once again cost Abe his attention and deftness, and when he went for another jump over the next piece of meat in front of him, his right foot inadvertently got hooked on one of its protruding costal bones. The blue Mudokon lubberly spanked right on the conveyor's floor between two ribs, hitting his head against the hard metal in the process. This caused Abe to get dazed, leaving him lying on this spot motionless and unable to continue running from the meat grinder.

A couple of seconds passed, and the former employee of the year assiduously lifted his face from the floor. His head still sang from the hard impact with the surface of the assembly line, which made him feel evermore disoriented. However, Abe's lightheadedness was quick to wear off when he began to sense another round of sharp rumblings approach him. The blue Mudokon glimpsed behind only to see the next but one rib side abaft him becoming smashed to bloody gruel by the meat grinder. This time this happened in such a perilous proximity to him that he even felt some of the blood splatters drop right on his skinny husk. But this was only a prelude of what was to come as Abe realized that the next piece of meat to be crushed flat was going to be the very one he was lying next to right now.

The meat grinder rose back up as the assembly line underneath it continued to move. The blue Mudokon fearfully looked up and saw that the hazardous device he had been so desperate to avoid all along was now placed right above his head, its ribbed surface still dripping with blood and meat pulp. This was a warning signal to start taking it on the lam, but Abe was still too stunned after his fall to react promptly. So, instead of stirring a peg, he just continued to watch the huge masher above him in some inert stupefaction as if simply watching could make it miraculously stop.

Time seemed to have become stretched to eternity as Abe lay transfixed, waiting for the massive frame over his head to come down on him. Then, after a moment of several heartbeats, it finally happened. The meat grinder violently dropped from above, precipitately filling the space before the blue Mudokon's eyes with all its imposing bulk. At the sight of this, Abe frightenedly turned his head away and closed his eyes tight in anticipation of that horrendous instant when his body would get crushed to froth. A fraction of a second thereafter, there was a loud deafening wallop of the grinder meeting the surface of the conveyor on its way and Abe sharply winced with utter consternation, his heart giving a flick beat in his chest. But before the blue Mudokon completely blacked out with dismay, he suddenly sensed something wet and greasy wash all over him. Even despite the clouded consciousness, Abe quickly figured out that it was blood he got douched with, and judging by the fact that he wasn't feeling any pain now, it was not his blood that was on him now.

Still startled, the slave hesitatingly forced himself to open his eyes and look behind him. When he did, the first and only thing he saw was the hulky mass of the meat grinder towering over him just a couple of inches away from his face. Abe slowly examined its outward, especially fixating on the still fresh greases of gore on its bottom that were thickly pouring right onto the assembly line. It was until the grinder rose back up again, exposing what was left of the meat it had just mashed. The former large piece of rib side was now a smeared-out cutlet with some bony fragments piercing its fabric here and there. This spectacle sent a wave of shiver down Abe's spine as he tried to imagine what would have happened to him if he had been on top of that meat. Then the conveyor moved forward again and Abe saw how the menacing device above his head was left behind him, having become aimed at the next rib side to roll underneath it. It turned out that the meat grinder was set to the assembly line to hit specifically those spots where the pieces of meat lay, and Abe was never in the harm's way. Nonetheless, it didn't make what he had just been through any less stressful and the blue Mudokon limply dropped onto the smashed meat behind him, bearing the exhaustion he had just experienced.

However, once again Abe was denied the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief as all of a sudden he brusquely felt losing firm surface underneath him and then falling off the conveyor head first. Before the blue Mudokon could even open his eyes to see what was going on, his head hit something solid yet another time and then he felt his body getting stuck within some very cramped vessel together with the piece of meat he used to be sitting upon. Hectic again, Abe started trying to crawl out of whatever he dropped into, clumsily getting meshed in his own moves. After a few gawky scrabbles he finally managed to pull his head out to the light and then discovered himself to be sitting inside a huge barrel moving along another assembly line. Abe looked up and then saw the conveyor he had just fallen off now placed about ten feet above him with rib sides constantly dropping from it into the barrels on the lower conveyor. The blue Mudokon realized that he had just shared the fate of one of those rib sides, but failed to see that coming earlier because of his fuzziness.

Another danger had passed, but before Abe was even able to comprehend this, he began to hear some clapping sounds coming from the right. The blue Mudokon sharply reverted eyes and saw some large crane-like device slowly move toward one of the barrels in his line. When the two objects finally met, the claw-like appendage at the end of the device's jib clutched the barrel and then sealed it pressure-tight with a cover. The assembly line then continued to roll on as the sealing mechanism moved back to grab another cover and then returned in position to repeat the process with the next barrel in line. Abe figured out that the barrels on this conveyor were to be getting corked up, and if he didn't hurry right now, the same would fall to his lot while he was still sitting inside _his_ barrel. Amid this thought, he quickly tried to get out of the barrel, but due to the tight squeeze, all he did was give it a swing, thus causing it to overturn. As a result, the barrel just fell off the conveyor all the way down into the vast expanse of space beneath, with Abe remaining stuck in it.

The blue Mudokon's heart went straight to his feet when he experienced another sudden and harsh falling from height. It started with the usual choky feeling at the beginning of the fall which was quickly converted into a burst of fright from a forceful collision of the barrel with something solid beneath. Then the barrel started rolling and Abe's world at once turned into a whirlwind in the truest sense of this word. The former employee of the year could only scream helplessly, partly in fear and partly in pain from the manifold impacts with the spinning corpus of the barrel. Before Abe's eyes, everything started reeling rabidly, making him feel as if he had just got into a drum of a washing machine. The blue Mudokon was now ensnared in a trap that he himself had created, and there was no telling to when he would be able to get out of it.

The barrel kept rolling rapidly and relentlessly until it hit something on its way, which finally made it stop. The blue Mudokon was almost half dead by this moment and barely refrained from fainting when he was released from this 'amusement ride' at last. His head was swirling violently and his stomach felt to be seconds away from losing its latest dinner. The only thing to prevent Abe from completely yielding to fatigue was his bodily fear of getting overtaken by his pursuers, which was still tightly registered within his mind even after everything he had already been through. So, with that fixed idea to guide his bleared brain, Abe feebly crawled out of the barrel. He was completely disoriented and his vision was still swimming with vertigo. For a moment, it even seemed to him that he was seeing a flock of tiny birds flying around his head. However, this was quick to wear off after Abe shook his head a couple of times.

As soon as sense of sight returned to the blue Mudokon, he hurriedly looked around him to finally figure out his whereabouts. The first thing to come into his view were tall rows of heaped brownish barrels like the one he had just taken a ride in surrounding him from almost all sides. Apparently, this was one of the factory's supply depots where the finished production was stored. The piles of barrels around him rose so high upwards one could think they literally reached the ceiling of the place. However, once Abe looked up in an attempt take in their whole height, he found out there was still some considerable space left above them, which evidenced that the capacity of this building was even greater than it could seem at first glance. From this viewpoint, Abe could also discern the blurry contours of the numerous conveyors running up there, some of which might have been the very ones he had just been on. Now that he could fully fathom how high-positioned they were above the ground level, he realized that it really was a miracle that he was still alive after falling from up there, even though the experience had been far from pleasant.

Once through with examining the colossal heaps of barrels, Abe turned his attention to other details of the local environment. The floor of the place was made of dark tarnish metal with intermittent impregnations of grated areas, just like the platforms he had been running along earlier before. Scattered across this floor were more meat barrels that Abe assumed to be the ones he might have knocked down when rolling inside another barrel. The blue Mudokon was lucky there were no Slig patrols stationed in this depot; otherwise, the mess he had left would have probably at once given away his presence.

Abe shifted his glance to the walls of the premise. Those were ordinary walls of relatively low height made of light gray concrete. Despite this seemingly trivial configuration, they still gave plenty to study about them as almost every five feet of their length had either a poster, or an engraving of RuptureFarms logo, or a monitor with Abe's 'WANTED' sign on it, or something else hanging attached to them. What came under Abe's notice, though, was one sign that was the largest and thus the most recognizable of all. It was a huge emblem of a green Scrab in yellow round framework with a telltale arrow pointing to the right. The inscription on that arrow read the name of the area that this guide board led to,

'PACKAGING'.

Upon perceiving this sign, Abe didn't think long and directed his steps toward the packaging area. It wasn't that this location could be of any help to him right now, but since for now this was the only direction he could be certain about, he preferred to stick with it. So the blue Mudokon trudged into the depth of the place, his bare feet flapping against the cold steel surface of the floor. The alarms that had been making his ears tingle just recently were now only deafly heard from afar. Abe knew that he was still on the run and could be tracked down by his pursuers at any moment. Yet, after everything he'd been through, he just couldn't help feeling this dampening relief as if all the danger had already passed.

After walking about ten yards, Abe came across a Directory Board in the wall. It was a brightly highlighted yellow button with a shape of a tridactyl palm engraved in it. Abe had already seen such boards to be used by Sligs when they wanted to view the layout of RuptureFarms building complex. Mudokons were not allowed to access these boards, but even if they were, there was little help this technology could do them. The majority of Mudokons were trained to do work that didn't require any special knowledge or scholarship, so most spent their entire lives being complete illiterates. Abe, however, was an exception in this regard as well. After having been promoted to a wax cleaner, he was taught the basics of literacy so he could at least read informative signs when traversing across the factory's premises or study manuals before using some complicated equipment. But what was even more convenient than this was that Mudokons, like Sligs, also had three-finger hands which perfectly fitted for the use of these boards.

With little hesitation, Abe approached the Directory Board and placed his palm on it. When he did, the button blinked off and then a holographic panel emerged in mid-air, unfolding to Abe's view the RuptureFarms' schematic structure. However, the moment Abe laid his eyes upon it he realized that his seeming proficiency in literacy was not very helpful here. While he was able to read the names of the numerous building's locations, the cobwebs of ways to reach them appeared to be far more difficult to decipher. RuptureFarms' internal arrangement turned out to be an unbelievably sophisticated tangle of various zones, areas and annexes with an even greater number of tunnels and corridors interconnecting them. Studying this inconceivable system felt like studying radials of a colossal spider's web, and the more effort Abe was putting into this, the more he felt his very mind boggle with confusion.

At some point, the blue Mudokon quitted his attempts to scrutinize all those impossible twists and turns of the factory's layout and instead decided to fixate on something he could actually fathom. And that was, the names of the facility's locations. Abe focused his sight on the letterings on the scheme and at once recognized the sub-zones on the periphery of the complex. Those areas were called 'Zulags' and there were four of them boxing the perimeter of the factory from all corners. Zulags were built as operations support systems of the RuptureFarms' main hub and thus contained about half slave laborers of the entire enterprise. However, as far as Abe's plan to escape was concerned, these Zulags were hardly of any use to him, so the blue Mudokon continued scanning the map further.

The next sign to meet Abe's eye was an area surrounding both the factory's central hub and the four Zulags. It was known as 'Stockyards' and served for keeping all creatures to be used for products like Scrabs, Paramites and the now extinct Meeches. There were only few Mudokon workers stationed there because this area was a zone of great danger: if a slave was to accidentally get into one of the confinements where the animals were caged, the latter wouldn't hesitate a second to tear the unlucky visitor apart. Another reason for the lack of workforce in this area was that Stockyards led directly to the so-called 'Free-fire Zone' where the world outside RuptureFarms began. Theoretically, from here, Mudokons could escape the territory of the factory, but both Stockyards and the Free-fire Zone were so heavily guarded by Sligs, Slogs and Security Orbs that the mere idea of any attempt to flee was nothing short of laughable. Nonetheless, the Glukkon Management must have preferred to not take any chances and still kept the majority of workers away from this tantalizing part of the complex. Abe, on the other hand, still saw plenty to be tempted about in this zone even without being stationed there as he continued to look narrowly at its scheme and calculate his options.

At last, the blue Mudokon had some clarity as to the next steps of his oddball plan. The only way out of this purgatory of a place lay through Stockyards, and if he was ever looking to make it out of here alive, he would have to reach this area. Abe certainly had no illusions about how dangerous this venture was and how heavily the odds were stacked against his possibility to do this. But, unfortunately for him, options were not something he was brimming with right now. Abe was already on the wanted list, and if it was bound for him to get caught, it didn't matter when and where exactly that would happen. Either he was going to stand still and wait for Sligs to pinch him right here or he would try to reach Stockyards and maybe change something about his grim fate. The only question was, how.

This brought Abe back to studying the map's directions. Orienting in this webbing of tracks hadn't become any easier even after he figured out the whereabouts of some of the factory's locations, but at least now he knew the specific section of the complex he had to be searching in. And it wasn't long before he finally found there an intermediate point between Stockyards and his current position. This was one of the so-called 'Grinding Areas' from where the dressed beef got onto the factory's production line to get grinded and then placed inside the barrels with the company's logo on them. Abe had visited this particular zone before and remembered what it looked like. It resembled a colossal pit where pieces of ribbed beef were constantly falling from upper tiers into a deep chasm below, forming there a gigantic pile of putrid, malodorous meat scrap to be distributed along the many assembly lines. The blue Mudokon had no idea what kind of premises ranged beyond that place because he never had the courage to cross it. Grinding Areas were also considered to be danger zones since pieces of meat falling there could easily squash any worker passing them by flat. Therefore, those slaves who didn't have any real necessity to be there, including Abe, rather preferred to keep out of the harm's way as much as possible. Now, though, it seemed, Abe would have to finally face his fear by coming to one of these areas once again and trying his luck in crossing it. This aspiration was just as crazy and infeasible as the one to reach Stockyards, but again, it was the only option he had right now. After all, he thought, if he could not have passed the Grinding Area, then the next staging point with Stockyards would just drop off automatically…

Just as Abe had arrived at this pessimistic conclusion, his reverie was interrupted by some noise coming from behind. Much to his frustration, this was the same noise that had been stalking him up on the conveyors when he was running away. The same disgusting, ear-jarring gnash of the bending Slig Pants that made any Mudokon cringe with fear the first second it heard it. Only this time something was different. This time there was more than just one.

Frightened, Abe sharply took his hand off the Directory Board and started twisting his head right and left in search for a place to hide. The state of panic was preventing him from thinking straight, and after failing to come up with any good idea, the blue Mudokon just cowered behind the nearest barrel. In the meantime, the sounds of the approaching Sligs' robotic legs had already grown uncomfortably close. Very soon, the voices of the ones sporting them became audible too.

"I'm telling ya, that Abe guy should have dropped somewhere here!" one of the Sligs buzzed in its typical squeaky voice.

"Then he should have crashed to death, which would not be very cool for us," the other one yawped. "Molluck won't give any reward for just another stupid employment accident."

"Don't sweat it, bros," the third one interrupted. "If we find his dead body, we'll just put a few bullets in it to make it look like he fell after having been shot down by us."

"Heh heh, good thinking pal!" the first one laughed approvingly and his laughter was quickly caught by the rest.

Abe, who was hearing all this loud and clear, began to shake with fear at the prospect of what these Sligs were looking to do to him. Now it was clear that he was not only wanted, but wanted dead, and when those guards were about to discover that there was no corpse of his here, they would not delay an instant to track him down…


	3. Chapter 2: Booming Business

**Booming Business**

With his heart thumping in his ears, Abe was fearfully shivering behind the barrel that provided his cover, bristling to the sounds of three pairs of Slig Pants menacingly gritting around him. His chasers were now searching through the area within just a few dozen feet away from where he lay snug, and with a hiding place as poor as his, it wouldn't take them long to finally spy him out. All that was left for the blue Mudokon to do was to sit as quiet as the grave and pray that by some miraculously lucky chance the Sligs would somehow miss to look for him behind this particular barrel he was now sheltering himself with.

The longer Abe waited, the more agitation kept growing within him, which, unfortunately, couldn't have failed to affect his organism. Mudokons had very delicate intestinal tracts, and excessive stress could sometimes exert a very undesirable influence on their digestive systems. This proved to be true in Abe's case as well when to his own surprise and shock he just inadvertently farted under his cover.

The blue Mudokon's eyes instantly bugged out in utter dread when he realized what kind of mischief he'd just done. The sound he had made might not have been too loud itself, but in the almost perfect stillness of this place it was probably heard like a gong. This embarrassing slip-up was followed by a few more moments of complete silence, which, however, seemed to have lasted like an eternity to Abe, until one of the Sligs finally voiced its reaction by asking,

"Wha-?"

Abe's heart sunk in his chest at that phrase as he realized that his goof really didn't go unnoticed. In the meantime, the Sligs continued to process what they had detected.

"Came from over there, I'm sure of it!" another one squeaked.

"What the heck with this pungent smell?" the third one lamented.

It wasn't long before the gnashing noises of the Sligs' robotic legs began to draw closer, bringing Abe's trepidation to an entirely new level. This was no longer about _if_ the Sligs were going to find him here – now it was about _when_ they were going to do it, and the instant the blue Mudokon fathomed that, he almost fainted with overwhelming fright. Abe realized that time was running out for him, and the rashness of this heated moment only added to his already panicking state of mind. Once again the former employee of the month couldn't think straight and was only able to obey his instinct for self preservation, even though what it suggested might have seemed far from rational.

No longer able to tolerate the overfilling pressure, Abe finally snapped and broke his cover by bolting to his feet right out of his hiding place and then tailing to his heels into the unknown depths of the Packaging Area before him. This so sudden move of his came as a surprise even to the Sligs stalking him that couldn't help but stagger at the abrupt emergence of a bluish dystrophic husk right out of one of the barrels in front of them. However, the warders of RuptureFarms were quick to come to their senses, and when they did, one of them hurriedly pointed its machine gun at the fleeing slave and shouted after him,

"Stay put, you stinkbag!"

Abe nervously twisted his head around at that call, only to see the black muzzle of a machine gun already aimed at him. This caused the blue Mudokon to immediately lose his direction and clumsily barge straight into one of the rows of barrels heaped on his way. The collision made Abe helplessly collapse to the ground back-first with the expanse of the seemingly infinite upper space of the factory's hub appearing before his eyes. In the following second, the slave saw how the towering pile of barrels he had just rammed into reeled from the shock, and then the wooden containers forming it began to fall from above one by one. The first one landed just a couple of feet away from where the blue Mudokon was lying, shattering into splinters and exposing the large piece of ribbed beef it used to keep. A few moments latter, more barrels came crashing down like shells of an air bombardment, forcing Abe to quickly return to his feet and start hopping left and right in order to avoid being squashed flat. The Sligs who were watching all this from a distance got really confused by the disarray Abe's awkwardness had resulted in and just started indiscriminately shooting ahead of them, hoping that some of their barrages would manage to graze the fugitive Mudokon through all this mess. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for Abe, the discharged bullets would either meet the falling barrels with meat on their way or simply fly into empty air.

Abe kept leaping from spot to spot almost ceaselessly until the barrels stopped falling at last. As soon as the blue Mudokon noticed that, he briefly glanced behind him and, to his pleasant surprise, found out that the havoc he'd created allowed him to distance himself quite far away from his pursuers. The Sligs were forced to temporarily suspend firing and start trudging their way over the broken barrels and smashed pieces of meat now scattered all over the floor in order for them to be able to come closer for a precise shot. Of course, that couldn't go without some words of discontent addressed by them to Abe.

"Stupid fartknocker, you'll pay for that!" one of them exhorted.

"Somebody, stop that little crippler, he's running away!" another screeched out.

Abe realized that even though he managed to escape what at first seemed like a sure death and even break away from his chasers, the race itself was far from over yet. Therefore, he stopped standing still and resumed running.

Passing by all the rows of barrels stacked around him, the blue Mudokon kept hectically winking his eyes in almost every possible direction, looking for anything that could offer him any means of escaping from this place. By mischance, a location such as a Packaging Area couldn't have been less unhelpful in this regard. A premise that was used only for the finished production to be packed and stored in it until coming on stream must have been the endpoint of the factory's processor chain, which gave a reason to doubt whether this place admitted to any other areas of the enterprise at all.

Soon the trek brought the blue Mudokon to a tall scuffed grey wall with three ventilation shafts in its fundament emerging on its path. At the sight of this, Abe gruffly skidded to a stop and just gaped at the obstacle before him with some helpless stupefaction. He certainly knew that the Packaging Area would sooner or later find its end, but he'd still been naively hoping to the utmost that it would rather happen later than sooner.

Befuddled by this discovery, the former employee of the month squinted behind him only to learn that the three Sligs he was trying to run away from had already overcome the hurdles in their way and were now about to catch up with him, the springing noise of their mechanical pants drawing closer with every second. The perception of this sent a stinging wave of chill down Abe's spine and he nervously returned his gaze to the wall in front of him, his fear-stricken mind trying to figure out the way of surmounting this hindrance.

In a matter of a moment, though, Abe noticed that one of the three shafts in the wall in front of him was missing a ventilator, thus having only an empty vent-hole left of it. Whereas the hole itself might have seemed too narrow for any normal-sized living being to squash into, Mudokon bodies had the exact build and flexibility required for performing such seemingly impossible moves. Thence, Abe hurried to snatch at this chance and jumped straight into the shaft.

Pressing his knees to his bony chest and nursing them with his long, thin arms, Abe curled himself up into a ball to fit into the aperture and then rolled his way into the very depth of the shaft. Behind him, he could hear the shaft's metal frame drumming with impact from volleys of gunfire that had probably been sent after him by the desperate Sligs. But then, quite unexpectedly, Abe found out that the shaft that he was sure either had horizontal direction or was going up turned out to be sharply sliding downwards instead, causing his roll to turn into a harsh descent.

The next few seconds reminded the blue Mudokon of that ride he had taken in a barrel after falling off a conveyor line above the Packaging Area. Only this time it was not the barrel he was sitting inside that was rapidly bowling, but his very own body. For some reason, though, this felt more comfortable and natural than whirling inside some cramped tight wooden vessel which movement you couldn't even control, and even despite all relentless swirling taking place both before Abe's eyes and inside his head, his vestibular system still took much kindlier to it.

Eventually, the ventilation shaft found its end too, meeting Abe with a set of steel grill cresting its opposite side. Luckily, the grill wasn't tightly affixed to the shaft's frame, and the acceleration the blue Mudokon had gained allowed him to break all the way through the partition, causing the latter to give way with a loud tinkle. However, this didn't make the contact with the hard metal any less painful, and the fugitive slave couldn't help but be stunned from the forceful collision when he finally spilled out of the shaft on the ground.

It took the blue Mudokon a minute or two to recover himself from another ride he'd just taken. When he was finally able to straighten up and look around, he found himself in a completely new environment. The place was just as vast and immense as the hub he'd just fled from, but unlike the preceding dark and lurid premises that were only occasionally brightened by the red light of ringing alarms, this entire area turned out to be evenly illumed by some mild yellow irradiation. The surrounding broad space was also pervaded by a large number of long-ranged production lines, but this time those were not conveyors, but instead some pitched cableways with infinite number of meat-hooks running up and down their length, each carrying a huge piece of dressed beef hanging spindled on it. Apparently, it was from here that all the meat got onto the conveyors in the central hub where the pieces got pounded and then placed inside barrels to be stored in the Packaging Area. As Abe took in this impressive vista, he found himself surprised how even after so many years of working and living within this industrial complex, he still kept finding some places here he'd never seen before. This was a sad reminder of how terribly limited was Mudokons' freedom of movement within the borders of RuptureFarms.

While the upper field of the area was all spangled with those moving meat-hook lines, the lower field happened to abound with means of traversing through its extensive space. Those means were the many isolated metal platforms hanging above the place's bottom ground like suspension bridges, one of which Abe was standing on right now. The platforms were connected with each other with high tech transportation gizmos known as portals. These ingenious devices could warp the very fabric of time and space, allowing theirs users to travel for short distances within a blink of an eye. The majority of portals spread across RuptureFarms had an even longer range, permitting transit not just within a solitary premise, but from one part of the enterprise to another. Such portals, though, could only be used by Glukkons and Sligs as they were deliberately programmed to be activated by voices of either the factory's managers or the guards. It was another preventive measure from undesirable excessive migration of slaves across the complex. The portals Abe was beholding now, however, belonged to the less important and less secured type, thus being accessible even to his 'unworthy' kin. All that it took to activate them was to pull the only lever that was usually placed adjacent to a gateway, which was exactly the case with the portals Abe was staring at now. As soon as the blue Mudokon picked on that detail, he knew where his path lay from here. So, with this goal in mind, he made his way toward the nearest teleporting machine.

However, before Abe was able to make even half a step, all of a sudden he heard some distant intermittent clanging noise coming from behind. The former employee of the month sharply twisted around as the noise continued to approach, getting louder with every moment. The distinct echoing metal ringing to its tone quickly gave Abe to understand that the sound was coming from the ventilation shaft he'd just emerged from.

Then, in a couple of seconds, the source of the noise became clear as a small dark oval object came out of the shaft's hole and thudded on the ground right at the blue Mudokon's feet, making him stagger. Abe wonderingly glimpsed at the thing to have dropped in front of him until he also heard it beeping like an alarm clock. Even despite his hazy state of mind, Abe figured out that the thing he was looking at now was a grenade being seconds away from blowing off. He had almost forgotten that aside from machine guns, some Sligs also carried clusters of grenades with them, and the one he was looking at now must have been desperately thrown after him by those three guards he had just escaped from. The instant this idea took form within Abe's mind, he felt another wave of consternation crush against his already stressed heart.

Once again overcome with shock and fear, the former floor-waxer did what he had become quite accustomed to lately and took it to his heels. Unfortunately, even those few seconds he had spent on deducing that it was a grenade to have been dropped on him cost him dearly. When Abe was about half way to the opposite end of the platform where the portal was placed, the bomb behind him finally exploded, blowing the platform off one set of fasteners it was attached to. The blue Mudokon was immediately knocked off his feet as the high ground underneath him curtly lurched down, causing Abe to slither down head first.

At the nick of time before tumbling down off the platform completely, Abe managed to grab the platform's edge and hang loose from it with his skinny husk reeling left and right after the slide like a reed in the wind. The bottom ground beneath was not that much distanced from the platform he was holding onto and falling down there might not have even necessarily led to him crushing against it. Still, the blue Mudokon was hell-bent upon retaining his current position as it offered the only means of traversing through this area that was known to him so far.

Alas, Abe's plans for continuing to stay on an elevated ground were not to come to fruition as in the following moment, the yellow light illuminating this area drastically changed to a blinking red one. Then the alarms began to wildly go off all over the place, just like in the central hub earlier before. Apparently, the explosion was so loud and forceful it even stirred the local security system, and now it would most certainly attract more guardian squadrons to this zone. The prospect was not very encouraging, especially, in Abe's current position when he couldn't even find sure footing for himself yet.

The slave's concerns about his presence here getting disclosed quickly proved true when a Security Orb flew to his hanging husk from the right and focused its red lens on him. For a few seconds, the drone just hovered over Abe, glaring him with its red 'eye' and processing the recorded image of the blue Mudokon. Abe was staring at the Orb almost transfixed, wondering with horror what kind of forces were now being beaconed here by it to take him down. He knew that at a location like this, just a small squadron of Sligs would not suffice to handle the task, so the lineup of the troops to be assembled here still represented a surprise.

The intrigue was disrobed when the Security Orb got joined by three more flying black round-shaped objects. But those objects were no Security Orbs. They were about two times larger and had long spikes all over them with tiny red lights flickering on their tips. Again, it was another element of RuptureFarms diverse security system that Abe was already familiar with. However, the familiarity of this kind did him little consolation. Those things to have gathered around the Orb were known as 'Sponge Bombs' – mobile mines built to be able to chase a specific target and then detonate upon the very first contact with it. Normally, due to their vast bursting radius and unpredictable trajectory, Sponge Bombs were mostly used outside RuptureFarms buildings in areas like the Free-fire Zone where they posed less harm to the company's property and workers. This time, however, was an exception. Molluck was clearly ready to put some extra effort into ensuring the unsuccessfulness of Abe's escape bid even notwithstanding the cost that effort might have required. Evidently, the Glukkon Management believed that preservation of their stigmatic secret about the 'New 'n' Tasty' product was worth having some additional casualties or collateral damage.

Still holding onto the half-destroyed lopsided platform and being unable to pull himself up, Abe started to conceive that his options had just become evermore limited. Traversing through this area via high ground was already rendered an unlikely alternative the instant that grenade went off. And now, with those Sponge Bombs also present in the picture, this possibility seemed to have become totally void. Abe realized that his only chance for survival now was to drop to the bottom ground that he had been trying to avoid falling to all along. He had no faintest idea what kind of traps could have been waiting for him there and if that part of the area would not even cause him more problems than help. But right now he had no other choice. So once the three flying mines began to impend on the blue Mudokon, he lastly quit hold of the platform's edge and swooped down.

The bottom ground turned out to be really not that far from the platform Abe had jumped off as he firmly landed on its grated metal surface with his feet without even losing balance. But before he was able to take at least a rapid glance at the surroundings he got into, he saw that the Sponge Bombs he was trying to flee from were already on cue, having repeated the trail of his fall almost to a hair breadth. Comprehending that time was precious now, Abe dartingly dashed away from the three ominous explosive devices into wherever his new path would bring him to.

And so another pursuit race had begun, and just like all the previous races Abe had already participated in, this one also had no finish line at the end. Again the blue Mudokon was forced to run for dear life from chasers that literally followed him in his every step. Only this time, the chasers were beyond such things as weariness or tediousness that could give him a head start. This time they were inanimate machines that could be hunting their target practically eternally if needed until finally running it down and blowing it to pieces. And as Abe kept glancing over his shoulder at them to see how close they were getting, he also noticed that they were making quite a good job keeping pace with him. Those Sponge Bombs moved much faster than any Slig on its robotic legs ever could, and at the rate things were going, they would very soon catch up with the fugitive slave. This comprehension caused Abe to feel a hard lump rise in his throat, and he instantly started nervously moving his scrawny legs with even greater frequency in an attempt to increase his speed.

Slowly this stand-off of two velocities was starting to exhaust the blue Mudokon, draining the last residues of energy from his already malnourished and emaciated body. Abe realized he couldn't keep running like this for much longer, and if he didn't find some way of evading those Sponge Bombs anytime soon, he would be done for good. By hard adventure, though, so far the bottom ground he was sprinting along had been completely bare and devoid of any twists and turns that could at least help him maneuver his way from his pursuers. It appeared that the lower part of this hub really wasn't used for conducting any operations, and everything of importance was located somewhere higher, like those meat-hook lines he had seen before.

However, at some point when Abe was almost ready to throw his hands up, his sight was suddenly greeted with a fragment of a large pipeline emerging out of the shadows right on his path. The pipe was fractured and indented in some places as if having been dropped from some considerable height. There seemed that it was supposed to be a spare part for some of the factory's internal mechanisms, which got discarded on the bottom ground while being transported to the place of its installation. In any case, this pipe was now lying right in Abe's way, its hollow section looking directly onto him almost like an entrance to a tunnel. The diameter of its frame was no bigger than that of the ventilation shaft he had jumped into to get into this area, so the wisest way of clearing this hurdle appeared to be simply bypassing it. But then, as Abe continued to peer at the pipe's orifice he was approaching, he suddenly caught himself grasping that he knew a better variant of progressing past this obstacle and at the same time getting rid of the Sponge Bombs chasing him. With that in mind, the blue Mudokon resolutely continued to head straight for the pipe.

When the last couple of feet remained between the fleeing Mudokon and the hollow object before him, he starkly somersaulted on the run and rolled straight into its orifice. The pipe was no longer than twenty feet and wheeling all the way through it represented no great challenge to the lithe and agile slave. But that was only the first part of the game-plan the former employee of the month had so suddenly come up with. Just as he tumbled his way into the pipe, the Sponge Bombs immediately followed his trail, looking to fly into it right after him. The only thing that was off about this was that the diameter of the mines was much larger than the diameter of the orifice they were trying to enter. And even as advanced as the artificial intellect of those programmed weapons was, the peculiarity of this kind happened to be beyond their calculation. Therefore, as the first mine in the row attempted to squeeze itself into the pipe, its spiked corpus just bumped against the pipe's metal surface, causing its detonation mechanism to become activated.

In the following second, an ear-splitting sound of explosion filled the space of the hub. The three Sponge Bombs disappeared in the most candescent flash of yellow and red fire as the white-hot pieces of their former metal shells burst every which way like fragments of shrapnel. The impact sent the pipe fly high into the air even despite its imposing size, its frame getting half-ruptured in the process. Abe, who had already rolled out of the pipe by this moment, still got knocked off its feet by the force of the detonation. This caused him to fall on his back and hit his head against some valve that happened to be on the floor right behind him, resulting in the blue Mudokon getting temporarily stunned.

Once again, it took the fugitive slave quite some time to come to himself from his daze. When he was finally able to align on his feet, there was only the blur of dimout in his eyes at first, and for a moment of two he could barely see anything around him. It was only after a few shakes of his head that the blanket of dizziness dissipated from his eyes and he was able to descry the traces explosion he had caused. The floor and the walls were all charred black from the blast, pieces of ruptured metal and debris lying all around. The Sponge Bombs he had tricked into following him into that pipe were clearly gone for good, which gave the former employee of the month the long-awaited sense of relief. The pipe itself, though, was nowhere to be seen. This made Abe turn his glance around, and when he did, he saw that the pipe he'd just believed to be missing for a moment was actually lying a couple dozen yards behind him. Obviously, the constructional element had taken quite a ride after having been tossed by the vast impact. Then the blue Mudokon lowered his eyes to study what he had just hit his head so hard against and discovered it to be a round-shaped steel door with a valve handle. Ironically, it looked almost like a door to a bomb shelter, only located in the very middle of an industrial premise. Abe had no idea where such entrance could possibly lead to, but so far it had been the only alternative direction he had come across in this area. Thus, he decided to continue scrutinizing it further.

Abe scrouched down and grabbed the valve with his hands, looking to open the heavy door blocking his way. However, the instant he started trying to turn the valve, he realized that even such seemingly easy task was not really that easy. Either his dystrophic arms were too weak or the valve was jammed, but the blue Mudokon could barely make it move even for an inch. Frustrated over this, he began trying to put more strain into his pitiful efforts, moaning and howling with every tug he made. At some point, Abe even thought that perhaps he was turning the valve the wrong way and started turning it to the other side. But this all was slowly proving to be nothing but a waste of strength and patience…

Soon the fugitive slave quit his attempts and wearily fell back from the door, already breathing hard and sweating from excessive effort. For a moment, he thought that maybe he should have sought his opportunities in some other place. But that was when more unplanned circumstances crept into the picture. Just as Abe was about to fetch some wind and walk away from here, the Security Orb that had detected him earlier when he was hanging from that platform high above emerged again, apparently attracted by the explosion. At first, it hovered over the blasting area for a few seconds as if recording the scene of the desolation left here, but then it flew to Abe again and projected its red eye at him. The blue Mudokon flinched at this as he already knew what that action entailed. The Orb, however, didn't take too long to do its work and was finished before the frightened slave could start moving out of its way. Then, in a matter of moments, alarms began to ring around with renewed vigor, once more giving away Abe's current location. With heart aflutter, the former employee of the month began to anticipate the arrival of another pack of Sponge Bombs to hound him, but then his ears became filled with the already familiar, but still terrifying noise of marching Slig Pants. The sounds were coming from afore, and if their frequency was any measure, the ones they belonged to were now running to this place pretty fast. Apparently, now that the scene of action shifted to the bottom ground, RuptureFarms security system decided to bring more ordinary forces afloat. This, however, didn't make it feel any less appalling to Abe who once again found himself forced into a corner by his enemies with very little room for any counter moves on his part.


End file.
